Gravitational Cracking of General Relativistic Polytropes: a generalized scheme

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small fluctuations in anisotropy and energy density can cause cracking in relativistic polytropic stars, providing a systematic approach to analyze stability and potential astrophysical implications.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized scheme to analyze the effects of local anisotropy and density fluctuations on the stability of relativistic polytropes, extending previous models.

Findings

Fluctuations can induce cracking in polytropic models.

Departures from equilibrium depend on parameter ranges.

Potential applications to astrophysical objects are discussed.

Abstract

We discuss the effect that small fluctuations of both local anisotropy and energy density, may have on the occurrence of cracking in spherical compact objects satisfying a polytropic equation of state. A systematic scheme to bring the fluid configurations out of hydrostatic equilibrium is revisited. Various models of polytropes are considered and it is shown that departures from equilibrium may lead to the appearance of cracking for a wide range of values of the parameters involved. Prospective applications of the obtained results to some astrophysical scenarios are pointed out.